By Mark Russinovich

Published: October 12, 2021

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Introduction

Desktops allows you to organize your applications on up to four virtualdesktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do workin your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of thewindows you're not using. After you configure hotkeys for switchingdesktops, you can create and switch desktops either by clicking on thetray icon to open a desktop preview and switching window, or by usingthe hotkeys.

Using Desktops

Unlike other virtual desktop utilities that implement their desktops byshowing the windows that are active on a desktop and hiding the rest,Sysinternals Desktops uses a Windows desktop object for each desktop.Application windows are bound to a desktop object when they are created,so Windows maintains the connection between windows and desktops andknows which ones to show when you switch a desktop. That makingSysinternals Desktops very lightweight and free from bugs that the otherapproach is prone to where their view of active windows becomesinconsistent with the visible windows.

Desktops reliance on Windows desktop objects means that it cannotprovide some of the functionality of other virtual desktop utilities,however. For example, Windows doesn't provide a way to move a windowfrom one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorerprocess must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu,most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop. Further,there is no way to delete a desktop object, so Desktops does not providea way to close a desktop, because that would result in orphaned windowsand processes. The recommended way to exit Desktops is therefore tologoff.

Screenshot

Configuration Dialog

Tray Desktop Switch Window

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Runs on:

• Client: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 & Windows 10.
• Server: Windows Server 2008 - Windows Server 2022.